


Five Times Rose Tyler Fell in Love (and One Time She Didn't)

by spoons



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Five Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoons/pseuds/spoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Rose Tyler fell in love, and one time she didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Rose Tyler Fell in Love (and One Time She Didn't)

The first time Rose Tyler fell in love she was twelve years old, and she didn't know his name.

She was standing in front of the Powell Estate, having been sent outside by an exasperated, half-dressed Jackie who claimed there was no way she could make herself presentable with all the pestering Rose was doing and told her if she didn't want this and every future shopping trip cancelled she would wait by the car like a good girl.

The boy appeared across the street, small and dark haired. Rose looked at him with interest as there were few children in the neighborhood and he seemed to be someone new. Catching her eye, the boy ambled over. Rose flashed him a smile, and he returned it, the effect quick and blinding like lightning, illuminating his whole face.

"D'you know you can see all the way to the the park from the top of this tree?" the boy asked, indicating the large oak planted in front of the building.

"No," Rose answered truthfully, taking this oddly abrupt conversation starter in stride.

"Wanna?" the boy asked, reaching forward to grab the lowest branch.

Rose considered him for a moment, then shrugged. Jackie's car was parked half-way beneath the tree's most outer-reaching branches, so climbing it wouldn't technically be breaking her promise, and she was always up for an adventure. "Yeah, alright then," she said.

The boy went first, showing her all the right branches to grab and pulling her up by the wrist when she struggled. When they got to the top Rose discovered you really could see the sloping green grass of the park, and gazed happily around at all the other unexpectedly lovely sights being up that high granted, like the tops of the Estate buildings and the primary school's parking lot. Her visual perusal ended with the boy next to her. He shot her another electric smile, and Rose Tyler fell in love.

Then Jackie had emerged from the apartment building and began shouting in her I-Might-Have-Known voice, and in Rose's haste to scramble down from the tree she missed a branch and fell, the audible crack of her wrist for the briefest second silencing Jackie's rant. Then Jackie began to scream bloody murder, and as Rose winced and sniffed through her pain she noticed the boy had disappeared.

She looked for him for a long time after that, around the neighborhood and in every climbable-looking tree she passed, but she never saw him again.

The second time Rose Tyler fell in love, she'd known him almost all her life. 

Mickey Smith had always been the vaguely annoying older boy in the Estate who cheated at tag and pulled her pigtails, until the day when he kissed her wetly on the lips and told her she was beautiful. Then they starting going on dates and holding hands and she could tell people she had a boyfriend. He made her laugh and she made him stare when she wore miniskirts or shook out her hair, and Rose fell in love with Mickey and everything he meant for her.

Then Rose met Jimmy Stone and was sure she'd never truly fallen in love before. 

Gorgeous, brooding, sensual Jimmy made her head spin and her heart sing, and Rose fell so hard and fast she couldn't see the rocks that were waiting to break her fall. Jimmy wanted her, Jimmy needed her, and together they were going to do all sorts of amazing things. They would travel and he would play his music and she would be his muse, his sanity, his love.

Rose was dazzled by the stained glass beauty of their plans, so delicate and perfect, and dazzled by the man who was going to make it all possible. When she saw cracks appearing in the glass she tried her hardest to hold it together, but that only made it hurt that much more when it finally shattered. She was left with nothing but a thousand glittering cuts that mocked her with their destroyed beauty.

Destroyed was how she felt when she returned home and she was sure she would never ever fall in love again. It was because of that feeling that Rose Tyler fell in love for a fourth time.

Mickey forgave her for leaving, and even more surprisingly forgave her for coming back, and resuming her old place on his couch to cry about some other guy. Rose counted on Mickey always being there at least as a friend, but she hadn't counted on him being the only person who could make her laugh in those first chest-crushing post-Jimmy weeks, the only person who could make her feel worthwhile, the only person who could make her feel beautiful again.

Mickey's open-mouthed admiration had changed to soft-eyed adoration, his once-thrilling willingness to hold her hand or kiss her cheek now felt comfortable and safe, and Rose fell in love with the assurance of a relatively easy landing.

The fifth time Rose Tyler fell in love she saw it coming a mile off. 

Captain Jack Harkness was gorgeous, flashy, and oh-so-willing to please, but if that had been all Rose would have found it laughably easy to avoid falling in love with him. Snatching her out of mid-air, flying an invisible spaceship, scanning for alien tech, all of these Rose could handle, experience having helped her build a decent impermeability to being over-awed. Waltzing, champagne, and sulty eye contact Rose could handle, indulging contently in the lighthearted flirting before getting back to the matter at hand. But when Jack's heavy-lidded eyes went wide and his cocky grin disappeared as he desperately asserted he hadn't know in the hospital, when he paled at the idea of a child in so much pain, when he came back when he could have gone— then Rose knew she was lost.

She fell in love with Jack like she'd fallen in love with a diamond pendant that her gran had left to her; something beautiful to be kept and admired, something timeless and meaningful, but too precious and too impractical to be worn very often, if at all. Rose was fully aware of this fall and all the dangers it involved, and perhaps because of that it didn't hurt at all. There were no expectations or surprises. If falling in love with Mickey was safe, then falling in love with Jack was easy.

And then there was the Doctor. 

Out of all the men in her life, the Doctor was the one with whom Rose would never say she had 'fallen in love.' That just didn't even come close to covering it.

When she had first met the Doctor, she had found him fascinating and terrifying, and though that changed little the more she got to know him, every five minutes it seemed like she was able to add a new adjective. Wonderful, beautiful, hurtful, brilliant, controlling, giving, callous, caring, ancient, hyper, dangerous, protective, lost, incredible, indomitable, incomparable. And with a thousand million inadequate ways to describe the Doctor, there was no way Rose could put a simple label like 'fallen in love' on how she felt for him.

The word love she might use, because the generally understood definition was wide enough to encompass a portion of their relationship. But she would never use 'fallen' because that implied there was a time when she didn't love the Doctor and time when she did. And while the more they got to know each other the closer they became, Rose never felt that defining moment, that climb into a tree or first kiss or first sight or deliberate choice or acknowledged surrender that marked the change from out to in love.

She and the Doctor were simply together, right from the beginning. They simply belonged. And while 'fallen in love' suggested there was a possibility to come back out of it, whether by climbing or being expelled or some other way, Rose knew that wasn't an option for her and the Doctor. She hadn't fallen into anything— she had jumped, heart, body, and soul, and there was absolutely no coming back from the amazing, treacherous place where she had landed, the Doctor by her side. And that was exactly the way Rose wanted it to be, forever.


End file.
